The Winter Agent

by Gareth Rubin

  ‘Get back. We have to go!’ he cried, sprinting for the treeline. They had failed. All they could do now was save themselves. Bullets from the crouching soldier crunched into the van’s sides, bulging it, but it was double-layered heavy steel and they didn’t pass through. ‘Into the trees!’

  Hélène leaped up and threw her grenade. At the same moment Reece pulled the pin from his, waited three seconds and lobbed it. Hélène’s bounced off the Panzerspähwagen and exploded in a shower of dirt and smoke, but it was too far away to do any damage. Reece saw his lying directly in the armoured car’s path and waited for it to blow, but the moment never came. ‘Fucking dud,’ he growled. They all turned and ran. ‘What about Richard?’ Thomas shouted, grabbing hold of Reece’s bloody, soaking shirt.

  ‘He’s dead. We can’t go for him!’ Reece screamed back, ripping himself away.

  They dived into the thick trees, the trunks around them splintering as bullets tore in. A branch fell in their path and they scrambled over it towards their truck. The Panzerspähwagen drove over the caltrops but its tyres were too thick to be penetrated by the spikes and it kept on coming, rolling over Richard’s body.

  Thomas wrenched open the truck door and Reece jumped in the other side. Hélène pulled herself into the back. Behind, they heard a smashing sound as the Panzerspähwagen knocked the abandoned car out of its path and turned up the junction to where they were. Thomas started the engine, but it wouldn’t catch, turning over with a pneumonic whine. He tried again as the autocannon from the armoured car started up, shooting into the ground beside them, making it explode in showers of dirt. Then the engine caught and Thomas stamped the accelerator down, jerking them forward. Behind, the gun continued to fire, a couple of shells tearing into the metal of the truck and blowing it away. But the trees they had chained together as a roadblock worked and as they sped away the shells became less and less accurate until they finally ceased and the forest swallowed up the remnants of the German army.

  There was silence as Reece and Thomas sat, feverish in their anger.

  Thomas glared at Reece. ‘All for nothing!’ He slammed his fist on to the wheel. The rain was sweeping down the windscreen.

  They sped along a dark country lane more used to sheep and geese. After an hour and a number of turns to throw off any pursuit Thomas stopped the van and pulled the creaking handbrake. He stared at Reece. ‘That last motorbike. And the armoured car.’ Reece knew what Thomas was going to say. ‘They weren’t part of the transport. They were sent after to warn it. They knew we were coming.’ Thomas kept his eyes on Reece for a long time. Then he released the brake and started forward again.

  ‘I know.’

  Thomas lowered his voice. ‘Do we have a traitor?’

  It was a fear Reece had had from the very beginning. All three of the German intelligence services – the Abwehr, SD and Gestapo – had had significant success in infiltrating SOE circuits. He had been on the look-out for a German informant from the beginning, but whoever it was had stayed in a blind spot. And as the truck rumbled through ruts, he berated himself for his blindness, for a failing that had got Richard killed. If Reece’s primary responsibility was to collect intelligence on the Germans, he had failed in his secondary: to keep his own agents alive.

  ‘We might.’ A traitor. A traitor was lower than the Boche. Two bullets in the back of the head and burial in shallow soil hung over them. But perhaps he was wrong, he told himself: the back-up could have been dispatched for another reason, and then no one’s loyalty would be in question. ‘We should all lie low for a while,’ he said.

  ‘That’s for damn certain,’ Thomas muttered.

  ‘I’ll go to Charlotte to warn her.’ He could have sent someone else – it was really Hélène’s job as courier – but he wanted to see Charlotte himself. And at least something had come out of the raid: the film and any prints Luc had made from it were hidden in his studio and Charlotte knew where he stashed such things.

  He calculated: it was unlikely that the surviving German soldier would have overheard the shouted conversation between him and Luc – and even if he had, unless he spoke good French, he would have understood very little of it – so the Gestapo wouldn’t be expecting an attempt to retrieve the photographs. The odds were that they knew nothing of them. Of course, the Germans would have searched Luc’s house, but if the photos were well enough hidden, they would still be there.

  Reece would go to Charlotte and they would recce Luc’s house. If it looked at all like an ambush, they would walk straight past and try again a day or two later. The Gestapo were short of men as it was; they wouldn’t have the numbers to keep a squad there for days on end on the off-chance that Reece or another would show up.

  As soon as it seemed safe, he would locate the film and prints and make his way immediately to London. A submarine extraction was the quickest and safest way to get home, although reserved for only the most important missions. Yes, it was chance upon chance, but according to Luc there was a highly placed spy in London, and a man like that could kill more men than twenty divisions. Reece resolved to make sure he couldn’t operate for long. And then Richard wouldn’t have died for nothing. As he thought of Richard, hot anger was supplanted by cold guilt.

  He lifted his hands from his knees. They stuck to the fabric and he had to tear them away. He became more conscious of a stabbing pain in his shoulder where the bullet had torn into his muscle. He didn’t know if it had lodged in there or if it had passed right through. Either way, he needed it seen to. ‘I need a doctor.’

  Thomas thought. ‘It’ll be dark soon,’ he said. ‘We shouldn’t be on the road after that. I know somewhere we can spend the night. I know a vet near there.’

  ‘Good enough.’

  ‘He’ll treat you like a horse.’

  ‘It will do.’ Treatment by any man who could disinfect and sew a wound would be better than septicaemia rotting him from within. ‘I’ll go to Charlotte at first light.’

  He stared out at the countryside. For the past four years he had thought about death ten times a day – others’ deaths, sometimes his own. It rarely had any effect on him now; it was as much a part of daily life as pain. But sometimes, when he saw the life bleeding from his friends, the animal revulsion towards it returned.

  He would have to tell London straight away about the failed op. Charlotte would send a priority transmission and Richard’s family would receive a visit, no telegram. His role in the war would remain unknown.

  They drove through nightfall. Once, in the distance, thin yellow beams from headlights raked the road ahead. They pulled off the road and stayed silent. The lights disappeared and they eased back, driving on for another few minutes before turning up a dirt track that rose in a series of hillocks and pits. All light was gone now, and night birds flurried away, disturbed by the mechanical sound of men. Thomas kept his eyes locked ahead and hadn’t mentioned what they had both noticed – that in the time since they had spoken of their destination Reece’s blood had soaked his shirt. His head was resting against the window and the bumps in the road were knocking it against the glass, but he hardly felt it. He just felt tired, his mind was heavy and his limbs – he could hardly feel his limbs. What sensation he had was concentrated in his shoulder, burning as if someone had thrust a white-hot poker through his flesh.

  After a while he felt a hand on his arm. ‘Wake up,’ Thomas said. Reece opened his eyes and lifted his fingers to rub them. The jolt of pain in his shoulder made him gasp. He put his hand to it, but Thomas caught it. ‘Leave it,’ he cautioned.

  They had stopped in what looked like a farmyard. Hélène opened Reece’s door. She had a web of cuts on her cheek – fragmentation from a grenade, perhaps, or she had fallen against something with thorns.

  Reece gingerly squeezed out of the cab, each movement bringing a new stab of pain, and saw that they were in front of a hillside farmhouse. The location gave the advantage that any approach from the main road would be easily spotted. A light
came on in the building and the door opened a crack. Thomas helped Reece stumble towards it while Hélène drove the van around the back, out of sight. The farmer, a shotgun in his hand, stepped into the pool of light from the house.

  ‘Are they following you?’ he asked urgently. ‘You can’t be here if they are. Chloé’s here.’ He pointed upstairs to where the curtains had parted a little.

  ‘She’ll be safe,’ Thomas told him, helping Reece across the threshold. ‘No one’s following us.’

  The farmer caught his arm. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’ Thomas’s voice was calm and authoritative.

  ‘All right. All right. The kitchen.’ He took a look at Reece. ‘My God, he’s in a state.’

  They carried Reece through the rear door into a large stone-flagged kitchen. A grand wooden table took up much of the room and Reece slumped on to it, its contents pushed to one side. ‘We need a favour,’ Thomas said, lifting Reece’s legs up to the wooden surface.

  ‘Go on.’ The farmer sounded wary.

  ‘Can you send for Jacques Ferrier?’

  The farmer stared at Reece. ‘For him?’

  ‘Jacques can be trusted.’

  He wiped his hands over his face. ‘Yes. All right. I’ll send Chloé for him. He should be here within an hour.’

  ‘Tell him your horse is giving birth and it’s not going well.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The farmer hurried away. ‘You’ll be fine,’ Thomas whispered to Reece. ‘And Chloé’s a real looker. Twenty-one. You’ll be upright before the night’s out, if you know what I mean.’

  Reece smiled thinly. Then he lay back on the table to try to blot out the waves of nausea. He felt his mind muddying and slipping.

  CHAPTER 6

  10 February 1944

  In the dark of the farmhouse kitchen Reece woke with a gasp. Pain in his shoulder had jerked him awake and he touched it to find it had been treated, stitched up and bound during the night. But something else had woken him too. A faint sound of shuffling mixed with a metallic clanking: someone moving quietly outside. As the blood rushed back to his head he remembered an op, Richard dead on the road and a traitor.

  He rolled over and eased himself from the table where he still lay. He kept low so that his silhouette wouldn’t be noticed from outside and felt for his holster and the Colt, but his fingers found nothing. In the moonlight, his gaze fell on a knife block and he crept forward, slipped a long knife from the wood and silently approached the door on the balls of his feet. The terracotta tiles were freezing.

  He checked outside the window, but all that was visible was a clear sky pin-pricked with stars. The sound came again: slight, muffled movement, and then a crack as if something had broken underfoot. He pressed the simple brass door handle down and slid outside.

  There were creatures out there that he could hear but not see. As his eyes adjusted he managed to make out a barn, a few outbuildings, but little more. The crunching sound of subtle footsteps came from the edge of one of the squat piles of brick and corrugated iron. And it was coming closer. Reece pressed himself into the doorway, ready to spring forward. A figure in white edged past the corner of the building. By the starlight Reece could make out a gun in one hand and some sort of large metal canister in the other. He crouched. If he waited, he might be able to silently approach them from behind and take them with the blade. He watched as the figure made it to more open ground, covered with the straw and muck detritus of a farm, and then a glint of moon picked out Hélène’s profile. Reece tensed his muscles.

  ‘There’s no need for that.’ The voice made Reece spin around, the knife ready. Thomas was inside the kitchen, his Sten slung over his back by a leather strap. ‘She’s just collecting milk for us,’ he said, putting a match to a paraffin lamp, keeping it low. ‘We have to keep our strength up.’

  Reece breathed out slowly and placed the blade on the windowsill. He watched Hélène walk quietly back towards the side of the farmhouse. Reece was glad Thomas was there in the night.

  ‘You thought it was her,’ Thomas said.

  Reece licked his lips. His voice was dry and rasping. ‘I did.’

  ‘Well, for all we know, it was. How much do you really know about Hélène?’ Thomas replied, gazing back outside into the night.

  ‘No more than I know about you, Thomas.’

  ‘That’s true. We have to find out who it was.’ The paraffin burned with a faint hiss.

  ‘It could have been no one. Just bad luck. Leave it to me.’

  A traitor in the circuit felt a damn sight more painful to Reece than being shot in the shoulder, but it wouldn’t help if they all turned on each other. ‘We should get going. Better get back to the city before it’s light.’ Thomas handed Reece a pewter mug of water.

  Reece drank, feeling his body soften with the fluid. ‘We have to do it soon, before the Germans get to work on Luc and he cracks,’ he said. ‘Go to your back-up safe houses, break into your reserve identities and be ready to leave at the first sign they’re on to us.’

  Thomas went over to a heavy wooden sideboard. He lifted a small metal object the size of a coin and tossed it to Reece. ‘Have this.’

  Without thinking, Reece caught it in both hands and winced at the stabbing pain in his left shoulder. He looked at the object in his fingers, a crushed bullet from a German Radom automatic. He turned it over in his fingers. ‘Good luck charm,’ he said, putting it in his pocket.

  ‘You’ll need more than that.’

  The door opened and Hélène entered. She laid the back of her hand on Reece’s forehead. ‘Well, you’re hot, but better,’ she said. He nodded. ‘If I were your doctor, I would suggest four weeks of rest. I don’t suppose you would take that advice?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  Thomas stared straight at Hélène. ‘Someone warned the Germans about the op,’ he said.

  She stood stock still for a long time, holding his gaze, reading it. ‘If you’ve got something to say, say it,’ she said slowly.

  ‘Why are you here? You’re not British, you’re not French.’

  ‘And yet I’m here, risking my life for it!’ It was rare to see her angry.

  ‘All right, that’s enough!’ Reece cautioned them. They backed off to opposite corners. ‘We’re doing the Boche’s work for them if we go on like this. We have no idea if anyone informed on us. If they did, it will have come from outside the circuit.’ He knew that wasn’t true, but no good would come of a confrontation. ‘Get ready to move out.’

  As a boy, Siegfried Klaussmann had lived an outdoor life, combined with conscientious study, especially when it came to the natural sciences, in the hope of one day continuing his studies at a university. His father had been a doctor and was a kind man – respected by everyone, according to Klaussmann’s mother. When he had been killed in the closing months of the first war, his mother had cried until she vomited over her son. When she told him that Papa was gone for ever, Siegfried, then fourteen, blinked for a while and started to wail like his mother. The noise alerted their neighbours, who could do nothing but commiserate.

  The death of Dr Klaussmann meant that his son had to leave his expensive school and instead join the sons of shoemakers and clerks in a more modest local academy. By the time he was eighteen, it had become clear that financial restrictions meant there was no prospect of the career he had wanted. Instead, he joined the police and continued his post-school education at the local library and at open lectures.

  Early on in his career a colleague had placed a bag containing a bundle of bank notes on a bench in the station kitchen, turned his back and begun pulling crockery from the cupboard. The notes’ grimy surfaces and torn edges had served as a metaphor to Klaussmann.

  ‘No, thank you,’ he had said, stirring a cup of coffee.

  His brother officers didn’t know that his objection wasn’t moral so much as strategic. Although he didn’t want to touch the syphilitic dregs of society, h
e would have taken their money if he thought it really would be free. However, a man who accepts a bribe one week is the subject of blackmail the next, he told himself. And he wanted to rise.

  Now, more than a decade later, he looked grimly on a scene he had never expected. Six soldiers’ bodies had been neatly laid out in the back of the army lorry, but their respectful arrangement could hardly make up for the fact that their parents, wives and children would soon be getting letters saying that their sons, husbands and fathers would not be returning. The cold had frozen them stiff and the blood that had soaked their jackets was now dark red ice. At least they wouldn’t smell.

  ‘How many were there?’ Klaussmann asked the corporal who had manned the armoured car’s machine gun and was now staring at his former barracks-mates’ corpses.

  ‘We couldn’t see fully, Sturmbannführer. I would guess six.’

  ‘When you fill out your report, say two.’

  ‘Two, sir? Won’t we look weak?’

  ‘Just do as I say.’ He could hardly afford to tell Berlin that the Gestapo had let scores of terrorists run around the countryside, wiping out companies of soldiers at will. Better that there were only two of them and the army’s incompetent troops were responsible for their own deaths. He didn’t want this man talking out of turn, however.

  ‘Do you have family back home?’

  ‘Yes, sir. In Stuttgart.’

  ‘Friends there?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Close friends?’

  ‘I–I …’ the soldier stammered.

  ‘A charming town. I know the Gestapo chief there.’ He let it hang in the air and the obviously queer twenty-year-old in front of him understood. Klaussmann had a nose for queers. He had no time to deal with this one, though – besides, the soldier would give himself away sooner or later. They had a look about them. ‘The dead spy. Have him dissected. Did you see any of the others?’

  The soldier did his best to pull himself together. ‘We hit one, sir. Here.’ He tapped his left shoulder.